The Bosnia and Herzegovina national basketball team achieved its greatest success in recent decades with a spectacular 84:76 victory over Georgia and advanced to the knockout stage of the EuroBasket.
First of all, it is important to emphasize: BiH’s opponent is still unknown, but it will be one of three teams (France, Israel and Poland).
After a poor start to the EuroBasket, Adis Bećiragić’s great team opened the door to the round of 16 with a victory over Greece, and then spiced things up with a victory over Georgia in a direct clash to advance.
BiH entered the match excellently and scored three three-pointers in the first five attacks. In general, the three-point shot worked like never before, and in the first half we hit as many as eight of them.
Edin Atić excelled throughout the first half. He listened to his shot, hit two three-pointers and two more shots from the field, and thus led our basketball players.
Our defense also listened to us, so we limited Tornike Shengelia to just two points. We made the key series in the first half in the middle of the second quarter when the Georgians came within four points.
We connected three-pointers, and then went to a big 13-point lead (44:31). We went into halftime with a plus 12 for our team.
At the start of the third quarter, three-pointers again kept us in the game, but this time with a new hero. John Roberson immediately hit two and the lead went to the maximum 15-point lead up to that time (56:41).
Unfortunately, the Georgians started to get back into the game at the end of the third quarter.
Mamukelashvili connected two three-pointers, and by the time we went to the last short break between the third and fourth quarters, they had caught up to us by five points.
The fourth quarter was a trench battle and real drama. The Georgians even managed to tie the game 69:69.
The key moments in the final minutes of the game were Aleksandar Lazić’s three-pointer. He scored a plus nine with three minutes left, which meant that we had a slightly easier finale.
We managed to maintain our advantage in the end and register a triumph to advance through the group and qualify for the knockout phase of the European Championship.
BiH was led by the brilliant Jusuf Nurkić with a double-double of 15 points and 12 rebounds, the same number of points was also given to John Roberson with 15 points and five assists.
Aleksandar Lazić, who hit the key three-pointer, had 13 points, and Edin Atić 11. Adin Vrabac also scored in double figures with 10 points.
It is still unknown whether we will advance from fourth or third place. We need Greece to win over Spain to be third, Klix.ba writes.
